Big Oak SEO Blog » SEO Web Design

How to Use Keywords – SEO Tip 37

bigoak — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 11:25:51 +0000

I just returned from giving my latest SEO Presentation to a Virginia Portal/Newspaper. I spent the last week or two creating the presentation and in doing so had to put myself in the place of someone brand new to the world of SEO. Of course I do this all the time when talking to people looking for an SEO Company, but this was slightly different. This time I was having to teach someone how to do SEO and that meant going back to the basics for everything including keyword usage.

So many times, as an SEO expert, I think of much of my knowledge as general, public knowledge. For example, everyone must know what a keyword is, right? Wrong. And even if they know what a keyword is they usually don’t know how to use it to effectively to optimize their web pages. Showing how keywords could be best used was of particular interest to the group I presented to, so I thought I’d share my thoughts on my blog as well.

Here is my personal suggestions on where and how to use your keywords on your web page you want ranked for that keyword:

Use it at least once in your Page Title or tag, twice if you can use it in another form, but don’t feel compelled to have it twice. Once is usually sufficient. <strong>Example:</strong> <code><title>How to Use Keywords
Use it once in your Meta Description Tag. It can help convince users to click your search results. (See more about this at my meta description post.) Example:
Use it at least once in your H1
Tag . This should be main heading or title of your web page. On this blog post the H1 title is “How to Use Keywords”. The H1 tag should different on each page, and not the web site name. Only use ONE H1 tag on any given page.
Use it in one of your subheads. Your subhead should be an H2
tag. H2 tags can also, and should, hold secondary keywords, but including the main keyword is effective. Most web pages would benefit from subheads from a user perspective as well as for optimization help.
Depending on the amount of body text on the page, you should try to include keywords within the text at least 4 times. This comes with a BIG CAVEAT though. Only do this if it makes sense and doesn’t appear spammy. Remember you are writing for human and search engines. Spammy content can ruin all the efforts you made to get the user to the page. Be sensible and read your content. If too many keywords are making it sound silly, take them out. Avoid keyword stuffing.
If you have images on the page, and it makes sense, you should add it to the alt tag.
If you have images on the page, and it makes sense, you should add your keyword to the image title. This isn’t something most people to but it is helpful, in my opinion and only takes a few seconds. So your image tags should look like this:
.
Add your keyword to link in other pages of your site, pointing to the page you want ranked. Linking out from the page you want ranked is fine, but do not use the keyword you want that page ranked for in the anchor text.

I think this will cover your optimization efforts. Of course tweaking my suggestions is encouraged and even necessary most times, but this is as good a guideline as any to start with. After you have used your keywords don’t forget to begin link building using the same keywords. Your efforts will be rewarded.

SEO for Images

bigoak — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 22:31:23 +0000

Very interesting article by Grant Crowell over at SearchEngineWatch.com.

Here are some of the more interesting snippets for those looking to capitalize on working their images into their search engine optimization efforts.

…image search optimization offers the following advantages:

Free product promotion. “Its another avenue of search marketing without having to pay for the click.”

More optimization opportunities than regular search alone. Smith added that photo sharing sites Social image sharing sites have more contextual clues that search engines can use for their ranking criteria. “There’s a lot more signals involved than regular web pages.”

Less competition. “Image search right now is a widely underused area for retailers. Some spaces have very few retailers or no major retailers at all.”

Evans attests that features natural to image search–easier to optimize, free inclusion, and less competition from major retailers – create special advantages of image search optimization for niche markets and smaller retailers.

“This is one case where smaller retailers without large content management systems can hold an advantage,” said Evans. “Smaller retailers have direct control over picture descriptions, picture names and content that is directly around the pictures and on the page. Content Management Systems have a lot more constraints on content and files names and therefore it is a lot more difficult to optimize for image search,” she said.

Image Optimization Tips

The panelists offered the following tips for optimizing images for search engines:

Image originality. The panelists agree that there is a special advantage to taking original photos, even if you are a retailer who already receives photos elsewhere such as from a manufacturer. “The more control you have over the images on your site the better.” says Evans. “You can brand them with your logo, url or trademark. It also allows you as the retailer to present the product in the best possible way that will convert with your own audience, not to mention allowing you to present the features in a different way than other competitors.

Image formatting. Thurow advises saving photos as JPG files, and other graphic image types as GIFs “Search engines are going to interpret a GIF as a standard graphic image with 256 colors,” Thurow said, “and JPGs as photos (because photos have millions of colors.” says said Shari Thurow, Webmaster and Marketing Director at Grantastic Designs, Inc..

Image naming. “Make the image names of your files match what is actually represented in the file,” says Thurow. “The image name will appear beneath the graphic image in search results. It helps to communicate to searchers that they are viewing the desired graphic image. “Do NOT expect your photo editing program’s default settings to give you optimized file names,” she continued. “Default names communicate nothing to the search engines on their own. Make sure to set up your own file naming structure in advance.”

Expand audience base. Be broad in your subject matter. Image search is not just for retailers directly reaching customers. “There are all sorts of innovative ways you can get people interested in your company and hence build up traffic and conversions. For example, factories might show steps in product manufactures, hotels might show furniture & decorative art in addition to details on their rooms, and restaurants might show picturesque views or special event rooms.”

Optimize the page with the image. Optimize the page the image appears on can be just as important as optimizing the image itself. “Optimizing the actual page for contextual search improves graphic images search,” Thurow added. “Search engines also look at text surrounding a graphic image to determine relevancy.” says Thurow. “Text within the anchor tag and next to anchor text is especially going to influence image-search rankings,” said Thurow. “If you can reasonably put labels and captions on key graphic images, try and do so.”

File organization. Both Evans and Thurow mentioned of crucial importance is creating an image folder on your web server space that’s accessible to the search engines. “Do not robots exclude your graphic images directory or limit search engine access to graphic-image files.” says Thurow. Another big mistake people make is putting their ‘click to see larger image’ inside of a JavaScript link. When you do that, you are limiting search engines’ access to that image file.”

Usability is “Queen”. According to Thurow, usability is very important in image search optimization. “It’s one thing for a graphic image to show up at the top of image search results,” she said. “It’s another thing to get people to click on the link to the image and go to your site. Writing alternative text (which shows up in Google Image search results) that is keyword stuffed is not going to inspire people to click on the link in that image to your site.” Smith also added that sometimes adding a not directly onto a region of a photo can invite users to comment and participate.”

Read the entire article.

Good Design with Good SEO, is It Possible?

bigoak — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 16:56:05 +0000

At Big Oak SEO we come across the debate of Search Engine Optimization versus good design. We feel both can be achieved if the company working on your site understands both. At Big Oak SEO we do. We have trained graphic designers who work with trained SEO Consultants to create a site, both pleasing to the eye and high-ranking in the search engine Results. We can help your site or business. Visit our site today for more information.

Technology Column: Design vs. SEO: Can My Site Look Good and Rank Well?
Do you have to sacrifice all of the creative and artistic elements of your web site to rank in the search engines? Later in this article I’ll show you a real case scenario and the design and SEO approach used.

Thanks to the birth of professional search engine marketers the top ranks are saturated with the pages of companies that can pay for such insight. That said, it’s certainly possible to employ high ranking tactics in your own website. Actually, the most basic tactics can move you up from an 800 position to a 300. However, it’s the top of the scale where efforts seem almost inversely exponential or logarithmic, you put a ton in to see a tiny change in rank.

How do you meld the ambitious overhauls required to attain significant ranking and NOT compromise the design of your site?

Design Can’t Be Ignored
If you have an existing site, you’ve probably tied it into your existing promotional content. Even if you’ve allowed your website to cater to the more free form of the net, it should still be designed as a recognizable extension of your business.

The reasons for doing so are valid, and can’t simply be ignored for the sake of achieving a first age position, can they? If your research into search optimization leaves you shuffling around thoughts of content, keyword saturated copy and varying link text, you are correctly understanding some of the basic pillars of search engine optimization.

And, you aren’t alone if you have this disheartening thought–If I do all this SEO stuff and reach number one across the board, who would stay at my site because it’s so stale and boring I’m even embarrassed to send people there!

There are two ways to successfully combine design and SEO. The first is to be a blue chip and/or Fortune 500 company with multi million dollar advertising and branding budgets to deliver your website address via television, radio, billboards, PR parties and giveaways with your logo.

Since chances are that’s not you, and certainly not me, lets look at the second option. It begins with some research into your market, some thoughtful and creative planning, and a designer who is a search engine optimizer, and understands at least basic CSS and HTML programming techniques. Or a combination of people with these skills that can work very well together.

Design is for brochures, instant results are for the web
That’s not the whole truth, but it will help compare and contrast design and SEO. In reality, SEO needs the quantity and detail of supporting text that a brochure has, but good web design has to catch a viewer’s attention in 5 seconds. It’s pretty difficult to read and absorb the content of an entire brochure in less than 5 seconds.

Search engines need rich, related, appropriate, changing and poignant content. And for them to rank you, all of that must be on your pages. But if it’s not well organized and broken down into bite size chunks, no one is going to bother learning about what you’re offering.

Construction 101- Attractive Design and SEO
Sadly, it’s very difficult to optimize a site without completely overhauling it. You’ll soon understand why. Design and SEO must be strongly rooted into every aspect of each other, possessing a true, symbiotic relationship. Lets look at a simplified example of this. Lets say you are optimizing a page for the keyword phrase, “pumpkin bread recipe.”

From a design standpoint “Pumpkin Bread Recipe” would be the heading for the page, in a nice, readable font with the words perhaps an orange-brown color. And lets add a fine, green rule around it.

There are many ways to create that simple, colored heading. However, there is only one way that is best for both design and SEO. That is to use Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS. In addition, that line of code containing “Pumpkin Bread Recipe” needs to be as close to the top of the page as possible (which CSS also allows).

To a viewer, the recipe text might be read more if it were located to the right of a photo of a buttered piece of pumpkin bread on a small plate next to a lightly steaming cup of coffee.

SEO needs to read that ingredient list and baking instructions. Search engines now understand on a rudimentary level that the ingredients are indeed related to the optimized words- pumpkin bread recipe.

Additionally, it would take many extra lines of code to make a table in this example if you didn’t use CSS. Search engines don’t like extra code. In fact, given enough times, that “extra” code will make the keyword phrases seem less important and hurt rank.

Note: In the page code, a few thousand characters more than you need to get all of that content organized would normally just add to your page load time, and might be acceptable. But to a search engine, that time can really add up. It wont read through page after page, site after site, billionth after billionth character of unimportant code to find the relevant text. Therefore, the less code, the better your chances. Moral- Less code, more content.

SEO usually means REDO
In the previous pumpkin example, CSS will eliminate the need for almost any extra code at all, and provide the means to place the text to the right of the photo.

Now, imagine that someone had already created this page, but done so using other programming methods. The page could very well be W3C compliant, well programmed and got the job done. However, without designing and programming for optimization as in the above illustration, the end result would have no significant rank compared to others that do.

You can be sure that there exist at least 30 web sites built to rank for the keywords “pumpkin bread recipe”. Note- why did I use the number 30? It’s safe to assume if you’re not on the first three results pages of a search, you’re not being seen.

While this is a simple example, hopefully you understand that it would be impossible to optimize this simple page without redoing it. This isn’t always the case, but extrapolate this into detailed, multiple pages in an entire website and the issue is greatly magnified.

Aesthetic Importance vs. Traffic
Everyone has an idea of what they want their site to look like. The pretty factor- splash pages, cool flash and graphics must now be justified as to their importance to the bottom line. If you want/need to establish an online presence, you will have to make some compromises in these areas.

Understand exactly the role your site should play in your company marketing.

Ask- What is the goal of your website and who is its audience? Is it for existing clients to see? Is it to reach new clients? To venture into yet untapped market segments?
Ask- How strongly do your other marketing efforts promote your site?
Ask- Is your website an extension of your existing collateral that must reflect the same graphical look?
Ask- Is your website meant to assist to your sales force or is it your sales force?

Chances are you wont have any single answers. That’s ok. It will give you some meat for your designer/SEO to digest and develop a solution for you.

Real case of Design balanced with SEO and salability
If you sell jewelry solely online, you must have a catalog of exceptional photography and detailed, high-resolution close up images. But, you must be optimized and rank well if you want to sell any of that jewelry.

If such a company approached me with this project, my recommendation would be this: If you sell a product, people have to see that product. Lots of good images. The site should be slick and sheik and easy to navigate. The home page has to capture the buyer’s attention. If it’s very expensive jewelry, the site should have a lot of class and elegance. If it’s home made jewelry, the site shouldn’t look home made.

However, as you have no store front, if the online community can’t find you, you’re business will fail. So I’d have a very optimized home page with some discussion of the quality of your product, the history of your company, etc. This is also great sales copy. Ad a few special catalog pieces with descriptions below some smartly placed gifs, jpegs and readable type graphics built out of CSS and you’ve got a cool to look at, content rich, well optimized layout.

I’d make the link to your catalog very obvious and prominent. Note the catalog is not the homepage. I’d also include subsequent well written, in depth pages about the history of some specific pieces. Load them with targeted keywords and a few images. Again, make your catalog link very prominent. In doing so you’re creating relevant content for search engines AND providing additional pages that can rank.

The catalog can be database driven, simple and changeable, and you have the foundation to build your search rank.

Planning Your Site
If your designer is not a search engine optimizer, hire one to work with your designer from the initial development stage of your site. If you would like a visible presence that is not dependant on traditional marketing efforts to get your name around, then you will have to optimize.

However, with advances in html and css, text itself can be a very flexible and attractive design element with endless possibilities. Site optimization consists of some rigid, unbendable rules. It can be intertwined successfully with very creative and attractive design. If your Designer and SEO aren’t the same person or company, make sure they have the same, close working relationship.

About The Author
John Krycek is a creative director at theMouseworks.ca Toronto website design. Learn more about search engine optimization, internet marketing, web development and graphic design in easy, non-technical, up front English at http://www.themouseworks.ca.

Big Oak SEO Blog » SEO Web Design

How to Use Keywords – SEO Tip 37

Tag . This should be main heading or title of your web page. On this blog post the H1 title is “How to Use Keywords”. The H1 tag should different on each page, and not the web site name. Only use ONE H1 tag on any given page.

tag. H2 tags can also, and should, hold secondary keywords, but including the main keyword is effective. Most web pages would benefit from subheads from a user perspective as well as for optimization help.

SEO for Images

Good Design with Good SEO, is It Possible?